


The room at the end of the corridor.

by Phileas



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Magical Realism, poc characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 19:13:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phileas/pseuds/Phileas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is nothing.  <br/>In the room. </p>
<p>[Written for Creative Writing class.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The room at the end of the corridor.

There is nothing in the room, there is nothing in the room. What's in the room?   
There is nothing.   
In the room. 

Yet as I was climbing the stairs I could still hear it: the faint sound of my mother's voice, husky and deep, urging us in so many words to leave the damn room alone. She was dead now, our mother. Freshly buried in some parcel of land rented to us by the city council for a comfortable 100 years, renewable at will.   
The burial was in her image. Like too little jam on a piece of toast, unsatisfying and dry. Like dust in the throat.   
My sister was downstairs, probably crying while sorting the cutlery. Spoons and forks and knives that would leave the suburban house in her handbag and be sold for cash the next day. I didn't care for that, I knew my sister and the debt her deadbeat husband had left her when he left house and children a few years back. She would probably cry again at the pawn shop. That's something she would do often. 

Our mother used to forbid us from going near the room at the end of the corridor, say there was nothing in it and yet, I remember sounds and shadows when I close my eyes alone in my bed, on the verge of sleeping. Sounds and shadows, like the low rhythm of a chant, and my mother coming out of the room in the dead of night, her neck burdened with trinkets and amulets, her dark hands blackened yet even more by wax, soot and blood. Barefoot on the old wooden floor she was as quiet as a ghost, floating in the silence of the house and I would look by the half-opened door of my bedroom. She smelt of soil and burnt fat and I feared her.   
And chickens would go missing in the neighbourhood, but I don't recall anyone saying anything. It was like a well-kept secret, a community burden no one talked about but always lurked in the corner of the mind. Holy secrets of sinners whispered after Sunday church where I sat in my white dress and shiny shoes, my sister beside me, her hands crossed on her lap. 

I saw the reverend for the first time in ten years that day and he hadn't changed much from what I remembered. Parched hands and white teeth, brown skin pulled tight over his cheekbones. He gave me the key. The key to open the room at the end of the corridor. He didn't tell me so, “I don't know, I don't know what it opens. It's yours now.” but I know, I know what it opens... And it's mine now.   
And I opened the door, I went into the room like my mother before me and her mother before that. 

My sister was still in the kitchen when I came down the stairs. I sat at the table and poured myself some coffee, no cream, no sugar.   
“Where were you?” She asked. I could see a spoon peeking out from her pocket.  
“I was upstairs, in the room.  
“What's in the room?”

I looked her in the eyes and my voice was husky and deep when I answered.   
“Nothing. There is nothing in the room.”


End file.
